At the 2011 Spring SPICE Cup Invitational held from March 12-16 in Lubbock, Texas at Texas Tech University, 14-year-old Darwin Yang earned his final IM norm. In further good news for our young players, 15-year-old IM and author Daniel Naroditsky narrowly missed a GM norm, but tied for first place with GM Davorin Kuljasevic.

Despite the demand of high-level chess competition, Darwin as pictured on the left, has also played for his school football team for the past two years. It worked out well for GM Robert Hess! Congratulations to Darwin!